Monday, November 30, 2009

What are we preparing them for?

Reader Bonnie writes:

A question like “What are we preparing them for?” still stops me in my tracks. I thought all this technology discussion was about ‘how’ to prepare them. I know what I am preparing them for and it hasn’t changed for over 20 years.

I’m preparing them to think for themselves. I want my students to question everything, especially their own actions. I want them to celebrate diversity and respect difference. I want them to be responsible for their own actions and how their actions have global effects. I want them to care for the earth and their fellow living beings. I try to prepare them to act when they see or hear injustice.

The technology I’m avidly learning right now will definitely make my goal easier to achieve and I think more relevant and more interesting for students. These are great things! But I’ve known some amazing teachers who have achieved these goals with very little technology. Technology alone is not going to make our world a better place.

This is part of the reason why I think we've got to hit the mute button on the "T" word.

Fire is technology. The wheel is technology. The compound bow is technology. "Technology" is just the craft of figuring out a way to do something.

When I say “What are we preparing them for?”, I'm not qualifying that as a statement as to the bearings of education (let alone technology) on their rational and ethical thinking procedures.

I'm actually in a way thinking less of the students and more of the environment they'll live in. I fully realize certain limitations in bringing this forward in the debate, but I think about it nonetheless.

I think about what travel will be like in 2110. After all, it was only in 1910 when a North American airplane first claimed the life of a professional pilot; and yet, despite any hassles, air travel stands not only as the icon of the 20th century but as the safest form of getting from here to there.

I think about what art will be like. After all, it was only in 1907 that Picasso up-turned 500 years of European figurative painting. Been to a museum lately?

I think about what music, and the press, and grocery stores, and shopping malls will be like in 2110. In a way, only shopping malls seem relatively unphased over the centuries.

And so, I prepare my students to be critical thinkers. I prepare them to be able to handle abstract concepts and open-ended questioning. I try my darndest to prepare them for the challenges that lie ahead no matter what.

But in the end, I realize that the world facing them on the other side of the Digital Revolution is as foreign to me as the world of the Agricultural Revolution was to the hunter gatherers.

I'm obliged to recognize that I'm of a generation caught in the transition between two ages. And these sorts of cultural/technological revolutions just seem to catch up to us now and then.

One way or another, the world is fundamentally changed as a result.

Our students need the critical capacity to be able to handle this change. You better be putting them through the paces of Lao-Tzu, Plato, Seneca, and Kant. But none of that will forecast how the world looks after the dust of this revolution settles.

And thus, for a simple guy like me, all I can ask is: “What are we preparing them for?”

12 comments:

I would argue that at its core, education is not about preparation for the unknowable future, and time spent analyzing possible future scenarios is largely time ill-spent. After all, our students may very well suffer from peak oil and population overshoot tissues that completely turn all of our forecasts upside down.

Let's teach our students how to be critical thinkers. The rest will take care of itself.

I'm preparing them to do research independently. Thanks, Shelly, for the reading list, a while back. I wound up cutting back on it a bit, and boosting the art history content... They've got 60 images to learn this winter term, everything from the Mask of Agamemnon to the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Minoan snake goddess to Sophie Schliemann arrayed in the treasure of Priam, and everythign imaginable in between.

I've told them that these 60 images WILL be on the final exam. And while I've provided a few hints, they are still going to have to use Google Search and other tools to locate the images/objects online, discover when they were made, and where, where they are now, what they're made of, and how, and for what purposes.

I agree with all of this - technology is a tool. Remember film strips, mimiographs, and film projectors? Then overheads, then LCD projectors. I used computers in school - TRS-80's and Apple IIe's. I used 286 processor based computers in college. Technology changes. What I learned and what are students need to learn does not change.

They need be able to think critically, research and analyze their sources, communicate, and self-learn. That is what we need to prepare them for.

While doing that, we need to teach them how to use the tools that are available now. While technology advances quickly, companies and schools don't necessarily adapt the new technology right away. That means that students who use certain things in school will be prepared for college and jobs. They will have learned to use different tools, and if we have taught them to solve problems and be self-learners, they can apply that to future technologies and tools.

This question is not a new one. What have we always been trying to prepare students for? The future is never here. I want en educated citizenry that is kind, compassionate, curious, creative, adaptable, moral, critical, reflective, able to solve problems, inventive, knowledgeable, and as Mike Wesch coined so well, "knowledge-able" (http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/knowledgable-knowledge-able).

Every generation has a revolution of one type or another. I think what is most pressing is that teachers/education leaders keep operating in the present and not the past, facilitating relevant and meaningful learning opportunities for their students.

Subscribe via RSS Reader

Teach Paperless: Now!

TeachPaperless began in February 2009 as a blog detailing the experiences of one teacher in a paperless classroom. It has grown to be something much more than that. In January 2011, TeachPaperless became a collaboratively written blog dedicated to conversation and commentary about the intertwined worlds of digital technology, new media, and education.

Other Blogs that Make You Think

Uncanny sleeping epidemic in Kazakhstan
-
Dozens of people are sleeping, according to the Siberian Times. More than 100 people in the remote village of Kalachi – which has been given the nickname Sle...

Buzz Paperless

TeachPaperless was noted as a Twitterer worth ReTweeting by Education Week's Digital Education blog. Also in Ed Week: "Shelly Blake-Plock has had some really intriguing posts already this year and I'm already behind. Considering he published 639 entries on his TeachPaperless blog in 2009 it's going to be hard to keep up, but well worth the try."

“When I originally contacted Shelley last week to inquire as to whether or not he would be willing to talk to my staff, he jumped right in, and he didn’t disappoint. What impressed me most about him as I listened to him describe his practice was his clear vision of what it meant for his students to function in a classroom that he designed: it was about them learning. He truly designed the environment with their learning–their unbridled learning–in mind. His decision was not a secretarial one, but rather came from a desire to push students to take control of information gathering, processing, and creating.” – Chalkdust 101

TeachPaperless was named one of the 'Top 25 Blogs for Educators' byWorld Wide Learn.

"I think you have some great ideas for teachers, and as we do professional development around the state of Maryland, we will point teachers to your blog." Debbie Vickers of Thinkport.org a partnership between Maryland Public Television and Johns Hopkins University's Center for Technology in Education

"The invention of the computer promised to lead us to a paperless society but has failed to deliver on that promise... until now, perhaps?" TeachPaperless was featured by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning as an Everyday Innovation

Your friendly contributing bloggers...

License and Disclaimer

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

You may re-use this content online for noncommercial purposes without needing to ask permission, as long as you credit the source in writing as Teach Paperless and on the web by adding a link back to our web site,www.teachpaperless.com

And of course, everything on this blog is the personal opinion of the individual bloggers and does not reflect the opinions of of anyone else, including employers, in any way. But that should be obvious by now.

Photo Credit: MJ Wojewodzki; a portion of a painted wall in the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii [2006]